(Dave Landry photos)
It’s not only on Thanksgiving that horse owner Steve Calhoun of Chatham, ON gives thanks that a pacing colt named Sportswriter came into his life.
“Sportswriter changed my life, there’s no question,” Calhoun said in the Woodbine winner’s circle on Oct. 10 after Sportswriter’s son, Reverend Hanover, won the $250,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final for sophomore pacing colts for Calhoun, Anthony Beaton of Waterdown and the West Wins Stable of Cambridge that includes the colt’s trainer, Casie Coleman and Ross Warriner.
Sportswriter earned just shy of $1.65 million, winning the $1 million Metro Pace at Mohawk Racetrack in 2009 and the $1.5 million Pepsi North America Cup at Mohawk in 2010. Sportswriter, who stands at Tara Hills Stud in Port Perry, ON, has been the leading pacing stallion in the Ontario Sires Stakes program this year and last, the only two years he has had racing-aged progeny.
“Sportswriter was the best thing that’s ever happened to me in racing and no matter what happens from now on, Sportswriter will always be the best thing that ever happened to me in racing. He literally changed my life, he changed my family’s life. He has meant everything to us,” Calhoun said.
On the day in 2010 Sportswriter met fans at Grand River Raceway shortly after being retired, Calhoun was just as reflective about how his life was changed by the pacer.
“For a guy who started with $15,000 claimers, I won the Metro, I won the North America Cup,” Calhoun said. “He’s taken me places as an owner that I would never dreamed I would ever be, so it’s hard to be too sad (that he’s retired).”
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